“Like our Facebook post for a chance to win. One lucky winner will be randomly selected for a grand prize.” You’ve seen these promotions. You’ve probably entered them. You may even run them for your company or clients – but are there social media contests and sweepstakes laws? You bet.
Social media contests and sweepstakes that fail to comply with the law and social media website guidelines can result in civil lawsuits, regulatory investigations, and deletion of social media accounts. To make matters more complicated, different laws apply to contests and sweepstakes.
Sweepstakes are prize giveaways where the winners are chosen predominately by chance. All sweepstakes must have official rules that cannot change during the lifetime of the sweepstakes. Sweepstakes must also have clear and conspicuous statements that “no purchase is necessary” and “a purchase will not improve one’s chances of winning,” along with offering an alternate method of entry, so that everyone has an equal chance of winning even if they don’t purchase your product.
Contests are promotions in which prizes are awarded primarily on the basis of skill or merit (for example, the best photograph or the winner of a trivia game). While contests always require official rules, the rules must set forth the objective, predetermined criteria for which each entry will be evaluated. There are also specific clauses that must be added about the prizes, methods and timing of entry, and other legal requirements.
Contests and sweepstakes must also comply with each social media site’s promotions rules. Facebook maintains strict guidelines for their business pages. Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube also maintain their own rules for online giveaways. Failure to follow these promotions may result in the deletion of your social media accounts or your client’s accounts where you help administer their promotions.
To avoid running afoul with social media laws and site guidelines, you need to have social media contest compliance procedures that will help your marketing and legal departments understand the best practices and legal requirements of conducting social media promotions. You also may need to work closely with a social media sweepstakes attorney to help develop your social media sweepstakes terms and conditions that are tailored to your online giveaway. By doing so, you can experience significant social media engagement without the costly social media lawsuit.
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